Don Baccus wrote:
>> Don Staples <dstaples at livingston.net> wrote:
>> >The full question went on to ask if they announced the spiking, why
> >did they not announce their guilt at the accident?
>> In this case, they did not announce their spiking, which actually is
> circumstantial evidence that they didn't do the spiking (since
> preventing logging, not harming loggers, is the goal, and this can
> only be successful if the spiking is announced. And, here on the
> west coast, we've seen plenty of spiking announcements, so I
> personally have no reason to believe that EF! spikers didn't follow
> this common-sense agenda).
Don S., i agree with Don B. on this point. Earth Firsters ALWAYS
announced their spiking -- to prevent the cutting of the trees. And they
only were concerned with saving old-growth treres at that time. This was
a 12 inch (tiny baby) tree and the spiking had not been announced, hence
it is extremely improbable that Earth First spiked the tree. The
"survivalist": who left skinned dogs on the bulldozer sounds like a more
liklely candidate for having been the spiker, except for the fact that
the spike was 10 feet off the ground when the tree was standing. That
means it probably got spiked AFTER it was cut -- which is totally
contrary to what Earth First folks were doing. Remember, their reason
for spiking was to STOP LOGGING (specifically of old-=growth), not to
harm mill workers who sliced and diced already-dead pecker poles.
> >Spiking is terroristic tactics, regardless of the motive, it is a
> >land mine, in place for generations in the big trees.
>> Hmmm...so are hunting camps, then, since the horizontal tiny limbs
> often nailed to big trees often rot long before generations have
> passed and long before the trees in camp are harvested, leaving
> large nails behind.
>> Must mean hunters are terrorists, then.
>> (and, yes, plenty of hunter camps, and old, once-official USFS
> campgrounds, are harvested out here).
I think the issue of spiking is getting all mixed up with the question
of sawmill safety -- the fact is, metal is found in trees all over the
country, for lots of reasons.
> >Your story doesn't ring true (not your fault Catherine, good
> >reporting) as it does not fit the worker or the worker ethic that I
> >have seen.
Hoo boy. That is because you don't live out west! When George Alexander
told the newspaper that as he lay on the saw mill floor bleeding, with
his gead nearly severred from his body, that all he wanted to do was get
his foreman Dick Edwards in "a death grip" and kill the "bastard," you'd
better BELIEVE his "worker ethic" was not the same as what you've seen
in Texas. Out here, labour is often opposed to management.
Furthermore, from his hospital bed, this 2nd generation logger said he
was oppossed to clearcutting. Why? Because you can't have grown up
around here without having witnessed the dead-end devastation that
clearcutting brings to our redwood forests. Only ssustainable harvesting
is going to work for these forests -- and for the people who rely on the
forests for their jobs. George Alexander knows that. Just about any
intelligent logger out here knows it too.
Don S., can't you get it through your head that what we are facing out
here is NOT the normal run of timber practices that you were raised on
back East? This is a veritable WAR zone ou here. The companies are
raping the land faster than it can ever come back and once they clearcut
an area down to raw clay mudslides, they shut down the mills and take
the jobs away. In the case of Charles Hurwitz, the architect of the
destruction of Headwaters Forest, the money his company makes goes back
to Texas (your home state) -- and everyone here is painfully aware of
that fact, from the laid-off loggers in Humboldt County to the
dewey-eyed tree-sentimentalists in Marin.
> Ever hear of the Wobblies? The history of the labor/industry
> relationship in the timber industry is one of battle, violence, and
> hatred. It really took the conservation movement to bring them
> together.
Don B. is telling the god's own truth about our history out west here,
Don S. The Wobblies were VERY strong in the timber industry and have
not been forgotten. The Wobs still exist, as a matter of fact -- Kay
Rudin and James Ficklin, the co-creators of the Headwaters video whose
existence brought about this thread, are both members of the I.W.W. and
their darned video is marked with a Wobbly bug! No kidding!
> Currently we conservationists and major timber worker
> unions are united in our opposition to Sen. Slade Gorton's present
> effort to allow federal timber (cheap) to be substituted for private
> logs shipped overseas, reversing legislation passed in 1990 to
> provide more jobs here when the federal cut was lowered. Seems that
> the workers have belatedly remembered the industry and politicians
> aren't trying to improve their lot in the least.
Ditto for the residents of Stafford, a logging town, who came out to the
Headwaters rally to speak up AGAINST the company boss, Charles Hurwitz.
The rally was held on one local guy's land and extra parking was hosted
down the road by another local guy -- who happened to be a retired PL
logger! Does this violate your sense of "worker ethic" -- or can you
grasp the meaning of such a gesture on his part?
The key rallying cry this year was "Maxxam out of Humboldt County!" --
and it was voiced by Humboldt County residents, not "outside agitators."
And meanwhile, as reported here earlier, another long-time PL employee
is suing the company because he was fired for revealing that the bosses
forced him to make illegal cuts (without a THP) and are implementing a
new program of unsafe logging practices.
So, as you can see, what is happening with the Headwaters Forest is NOT
a simple mattter of loggers and their bosses versus enviromental
nut-cases. It is rapdily becoming a matter of loggers, sawyers,
enviromentalists, scientists, and the EPA united against a company that
is running amuck under the rapacious leadership of a man under federal
indictment for financial fraud!
> >Logging is hazardous enough
> >without ass holes intentionally making it worse. That applies to
> >human blockades
>> How does a human blockade increase hazards to workers? They simply
> stop and wait for the USFS to clear the blockade. No one is harmed.
>> You're really reaching, now...
Those blockades are no threat to anyone. They are simply a non-violent
tactic to draw national attention to the rubber-stamping of THPs that
allow clearcutting on steep slopes and cause devastating debris
torrents. No one gets hurt at a blockade. No one is threatened.
catherine yronwode
cat at luckymojo.com
The Sacred Landscape: http://www.luckymojo.com/sacredland.html